The facility where I was made taught many things. By age nine I was fluent in as many languages and had a diplomat-level understanding of world and corporate politics. Math was a topic less relevant to my work, but I was still proficient in basic calculus by the time I escaped by murdering all of the lab's employees.

Each of my topics was taught in a different manner, with differences subtle to blatant. The facility was in the business of data, after all, and everything was a test of some kind. I was taught some courses with a private tutor working me through word problems, others with a hands-on chemistry set, and still more with nothing but a set of encyclopedias, a quiet room, and a punishment for failure.

At no point during my schooling regimen did any of my teachers bring up any of the topics Paige Guthrie is teaching me now, and none of my courses resembled her instruction style in the least. There is a certain looseness to it, particularly because she doesn't realize these are subjects about which I need to be taught. But I am learning all the same, about both traveling and learning.

"This'll do." Paige signals and pulls into a deli parking lot. "If they have packaged sandwiches, they'll be bad by now. Yet another benefit of resting up and leaving in the morning, mind you." Her voice doesn't contain true anger, not that I can tell. Maybe when we rent a motel room midway through what could've been a day's ride, but for now she is humoring me.

She goes to the counter (One employee, no other customers, four seconds to clear) while I make a beeline for the bathrooms off the back hall, which are to their credit cleaner than those at rest stops. I notice while washing my hands that the bandages around my chest are beginning to get wet.

Despite an abundance of schooling on how to apply wounds, I never learned how to dress or wrap them. I do my best with my knowledge of anatomy and observation of Paige's work. She had enough foresight to pack me with fresh bandages. I, in turn, will bag my old bandages for burning.

"Laura!" Paige burst through the door, plastic bag of food in one hand. "I've been looking for you for…"

I stuff the last of the bloody cloth into the bag. "I'm sorry, Paige. I was preoccupied."

"Nice job with the wrapping." She lets the door swing shut behind her. "Are we good to go? Because I'd like to make it a bit further before bunking in."

"I am ready." The scent of her food is subtle underneath the bathroom disinfectant and urine. My reaction to such smells are less extreme than those of others I've met. It's impossible to function effectively if you gag when passing within five meters of a toilet.

The gun fires when I open the door.

I keep my hands still, to keep the door from creaking forward or swinging back on me. The shot was close, a room or two away. The accompanying shouts are from the front room, where I smell the man behind the counter and one other person, a heavy smoker. The volume of their speech would be due partially to hearing damage and partially to fear, or in the other man's case, intimidation. I take a step forward.

Paige lays a hand on my shoulder and shakes her head. "I'm calling the police. Stay here."

Stay? I don't think anybody's been shot - the various meats, combined with the dirty bandages in my bag, make smelling such a thing tricky - but that doesn't mean that can't change. Whoever's out there has already demonstrated a willingness to fire.

"What am I?"

"You are sick, and you are injured," she hisses. "And apparently you have a death wish."

More shouts from up front. Demands for speed, predictably. "Not my status. Web designer Page Guthrie, what am I?"

"You're a teen searching for a place to fit in. Trust the teacher telling you it's not uncommon. Don't get yourself killed, Laura."

"I won't." The door shuts in her face as I make my way to the front room.

This is what got me into this mess, I know. Helping even those that would never consider returning the favor. But being a hero isn't a nine to five job. It's an identity. It means you can't ignore the suffering of others.

I've always dealt best in absolutes. A former friend once told me it was what people find so unsettling about me. It was certainly what I liked about her.

The robber is two meters tall, with buzzed black hair and a solid build. Possible southern European descent. Wearing a white undershirt and jeans held up by a studded belt. I have accepted by now that I will never understand fashion. He stands in front of the man at the register, ten feet away.

Six seconds to clear. No, my only target is the robber. Four seconds to clear. Can I do it without bending my upper torso? Five seconds to clear.

Heroes don't kill. Seven… No, he has a solid shot. Nine… Too many possibilities. I must get closer. Reduce the possibility space. Get within striking distance.

I dislike closing without a plan.

"Who the fuck are you?" The robber shouts, waving his gun at me. I drop my bag, raise my hands and walk slowly forward. He probably won't fire. I can confirm now that the cashier is unharmed. There is a bullet hole in the ceiling.

"I don't want any trouble." I advance. Slowly. Deliberately.

"Freeze, bitch!" His eyes are dilated, likely due to some sort of narcotic. Stimulant? Hallucinogen? My knowledge in this area is woefully underdeveloped. I knew hundreds of names and nicknames for drugs as well as their prices in multiple markets, but my courses hadn't yet covered the effect of each on the body. Such knowledge wasn't necessary to support the facility's dealing operations.

"I said freeze!" Incapacitation without claws is a challenge. Giving the man minimal credit, he should be able to roll with a punch he sees coming. I weigh 56 kilos with the adamantium; he probably has 40 kilos on me. A trip, perhaps, combined with blows to the head. Closing distance like this was a mistake. It let me understand my options, but by surrendering the initiative it made those options worse. Much better to stay out of the open, use the nearby shelving units.

"Listen—" The man's shout is interrupted by a rain of ceiling tiles and insulation on his head. In its center is a figure of gray, humanoid, fist down in striking position.

Paige Guthrie, Husk, crashing through the ceiling in a skin of rock. She strikes the man in the face as she falls, and he drops under her without firing a shot.

"What the fuck!" the cashier shouts into the sudden silence.

"Get the bags," Paige orders me in a husky voice, checking the man's vitals. As soon as I collect my bandages and the food she dropped near it, she grabs my arm and pulls me out into the night.

"In the car." She points. I go.

I sit in the passenger seat, watching her out on the sidewalk. First, she rips the stone from her head, each hand on a cheek. It comes off contiguously, almost as a layer of sticky mixed concrete, before crumbling to gravel and scattering to the ground around her. Next she pulls the rock from her hands, then her arms. She reaches into her short sleeves to clean her shoulders and armpits, then lifts her shirt for her torso. She rubs her legs through her jeans and stones tumble out by her ankles, then removes her shoes and socks to restore her feet to skin. Two minutes after beginning, she joins me in the car and starts it up.

"You were able to turn into rock much faster than—"

"Shut up." Paige pulls out into the street and guns it for the interstate. When is she planning to eat the food she bought? It can't all be for me, can it? It smells like sandwiches, tuna fish, pastrami, mayonnaise. Perhaps she got some made fresh while I was in the bathroom. It…

I smell salt. Tears are streaming down Paige's cheeks. She squints a bit, then more, then switches on her right turn signal and pulls over to the shoulder to stop.

"I can't do it, Laura." She rests her head on the steering wheel, her shoulders bobbing up and down with her sobs. "My secondary mutation, it gets in my head, I can't pull it out, I don't know what I'll do, just that I want to do it more and more…"

I have no training for this situation. No knowledge, no instinct, no plan. When I saw others cry, how did those around them attempt to fix them?

I drape my left hand over Paige's shoulder before pulling her into a half-hug over the stickshift.

"I don't want to be that again," she whispers. "But you were going to… Oh, god. Please, Laura. Don't die."

The correct response is obvious. "I won't."

"Don't die."

"I won't." I don't know exactly what my promise will entail, but I'll do it. Ambiguities perplex me, and I can't spend the time or effort for them. Especially not while human. I won't die, not while in Paige's care.

I've spent a long time near the ocean. When I lived in California with Debbie and Megan Kinney, I would spend time sitting on docks, letting the water carry away all of the other smells. I tried it later, when the X-men moved out to Utopia, but it never lifted the rest away. Under the salt was the sweat, and the grime, and the scent of everything else.

I smell salt and watch headlights drive past for eleven minutes and forty seconds before Paige shrugs off my arm and restarts the car.